Shelagh Fogarty tells father ignoring social distancing "you're doing the wrong thing"
7 April 2020, 16:44 | Updated: 7 April 2020, 16:47
Shelagh Fogarty tells father ignoring social distancing "you're doing the wrong thing"
Shelagh was torn as she was forced to tell a father to stop visiting his son from another relationship, as he's putting his pregnant wife at risk.
Rowan joined Shelagh Fogarty to tell her how he is stuck between a rock and a hard place in trying to follow guidelines while missing his son from another relationship.
"if I was following the guidelines id not get to see my son" he told Shelagh. He said that the prospect of not seeing his son during the coronavirus crisis is "unbearable" and he couldn't possibly not see his son.
When Shelagh asked Rowan if he was practicing social distancing guidelines, he told her that he "could follow them better", before telling Shelagh that he makes physical contact with his son every time he sees him.
"We can't have my little boy at our place for the sake of my wife and unborn child" Rowan said, adding that he goes to his ex-partner's house frequently to see his son.
Shelagh was quick to tell Rowan that he was absolutely "doing the wrong thing".
Speaking about the midwife who recommended that Rowan shouldn't visit his son, he stressed that "she can't tell me to not see my child".
Shelagh stressed to the caller that in her own experience she felt that there was "too big a chain of people" leading to her mother's door and Shelagh made the decision to distance herself from people so she could confidently say she was not going to infect her mother.
After learning that Rowan's ex also has children who visit their house frequently, she urged him to think about the "huge potential contagion chain" leading to his son, and being carried by him all the way home to his wife and unborn child.
Rowan defended his standpoint, asking "what's to say the midwife isn't infected at the same time" but Shelagh maintained that the midwife would be one of the safest people to be in contact with, such is the strictness of her hygiene process at this time.
Shelagh's final message to Rowan, and anyone listening thinking the same, was that because you're a parent, doesn't mean "you can't be exempted from the rules".
